Sunday, 26 February 2012

It’s time
for the weekly scientific and sceptical smorgasbord we like to call the
roundup. So let’s grab a plate and elbow our way in before all that’s left is
the pickled cucumber. I love it when predictions come true, not the Psychic
Sally type (as you read this I’m getting an image of somebody called Mary…
Marvin… Gavin… Kevin… John, that’s it John!) but the proper scientific type.
All round genius and hero Alan Turing posited a theory over fifty years ago as
to the mystery of how patterning occurred on animals. New
research takes a step towards providing evidence for his idea.

Creationism continues to try and work
its way into the classrooms and from there the minds of the children of
America. Fortunately there are still a number of people standing against
superstition and irrationality. I wonder if one of those is Republican
candidate Rick Santorum, he’s always had a keen eye for the
real problems that stalk America?

And lest we get too smug with our skeptical selves Daniel Loxton takes a step
back to look at what it means to even call yourself a skeptic in Tribal
Skepticsm. Does he have a point?

Why don’t we do chiropractic next? Actually there are lots of good reasons not
to do chiropractic and they’ve been in the news again. Edzard Ernst reports as the President of the
British Chiropractic Council writes about their decision
to sue Simon Singh for Libel.

One from our conspiracy loving friends over at the True Activist about how Big
Pharma are keeping secrets from you? When you’ve read that look around the
site and you’ll find that there are all kinds of stuff that lots of people know
that ironically is being kept a secret at the same time, such as the
suppression of scientific advance. I think my IQ just dropped a couple of
notches.

For somebody as busy as me (subtext – disorganised) sleep is something that I
am often short of. I therefore found this article on the BBC website comforting
as they challenge the
myth of the 8 hours a night regime.

So many people want to move away from that old fashioned stereotype of scientists
as wild haired bespectacled professors. But sometimes you just have to embrace
the fact that not all science communicators can be mop haired, smiley
Mancunians and so let’s hear it for the
wonderful Prof Martyn Poliakoff.

There’s a video at the end placed subtly to keep your interest in this bit
where I plug things, so don’t stop reading. First off congratulations to our
friends at UB:ASH who
just held their fantastic Reason Week of events, a major achievement. Don’t
forget that there is still just time to sign up for the wonderful QED Conference in Manchester, I was
there last year and it was brilliant. We have a tab up above for the DVDs
that we have begun to produce, so please click and have a look, more will be
added as we do them. And don’t forget our next great event with
the wonderful Deborah Hyde, Unnatural
Predators: The Folklore of Fear.

We’ll
end with Carry Poppy’s experiences of curing her cold with homeopathy. See you
all next week.

This week's roundup was compiled by SitP co organiser Patrick Redmond (@paddyrex) aided as ever by the suggestions of the wonderful Roy Beddowes.

Sunday, 19 February 2012

Quarks, gluons, red giants, white dwarfs, big bang. There are eight billion stories in the naked universe, here are a just a few of them in the Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub Weekly Round-up; trawling through space and time but mostly the global system of interconnectedness so you don’t have to.Have you watched our Andy McIntosh talk on DVD yet? If you want to get hold of your own shiny boxed-up copy let me refer you over to the DVD pagewhere Chris has handily laid out the contact and purchasing details. We’re still interested in your reactions and opinions so keep sending us your feedback.Did you see that particularly snazzy looking solar system t-shirt Alice Sheppard was sporting for the last Sitp Talk? Well,here's another astronomical representation, except this is a box of chocolates, and it costs a hefty 3800 Yen; that’s £30GBP to you and me. Go on; indulge yourself with some chocolaty goodness and giggly Uranus puns. More space calories hereand here. Resistance is Delicious.Sticking with space stories: A Martian meteorite, an incredibly rare object, has been given to science to help unravel the Red Planet's secrets; Rock star Sting narrowly misses out on a having a Meteorite on his doorstep; and, with no need to reach for the Google incognito window, some elliptical dwarf on dwarf action.Back on terra-firma, I don’t know how I missed this, call myself a Brummie! Apparently there’s something called The Dudley Bug. No, it’s not a virus that makes you talk funnaay, sorry, erm, funny; it’s a Trilobite, which also features on the original Dudley coat of arms. These critters can be found in the sedimentary rock exposures left over from old mine and quarry workings in the West Midlands; hard to imagine that this area was once covered by warm tropical shallow coral seas. (Tip o’ the hat to Birmingham University’s Mark Pallen for this nugget from The Rough Guide to Evolution.If you’re an avid book reader then you may sympathise with Julian Smith’s obsessive feelings.Studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Coffee enema vs. chemotherapy studyand Energy Chelation are dubbed “brain-meltingly bad.", "magic, faith healing," and laughable.Physicists have come up with an equation that explains and predicts the shape of a ponytail.This is enough to make your blood boil:-

We’re a romantic lot here at Brum SitP (even though we know it’s really just a heady cocktail of chemicals at work) so we couldn’t let Valentine’s Day pass us by, especially when there’s some cool science references thrown in. Have a look at what CERN, The Bad Astronomerand DNA Labhave lovingly put together. Click through on the CERN link to Suzie Sheehy’s excellent Valentine’s poem with an equation from SitP favourite Matt Parker.Oh, the agony of de feet… Study debunks ionic footbath detox claims.A faith healing television channel has been fined £25,000 by media regulator Ofcom over a series of breaches, including a televangelist who claimed that he could help individuals with serious illnesses using "miracle olive oil soap".Well if we’re going to have a magic soap story then it’s only right that a magic water link should follow: Water twiddlers micro blog too - Free Homeopathy consultations on twitter.Hmm, can you recommend something for a severe case of RFI - Repetitive Face-palm Injury? A couple of stories from over the pond: In an article from the Financial Times, Julian Baggini takes a look at Atheism in America, while in Texas, ex-Christian Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience gives an impassioned response to a caller during a live discussion on The Real Cost of Religious Faith.Get your irrational proposals here: An Irish Parliamentarian has proposed a change in the law regarding car registration plates, to allow motorists to avoid license plates that contain the number 13.It’s only been a short while since my last tour of Nam, though looking at the line-up of speakers at this year’s Science Festival, Cheltenham is going to be worth a second visit between the 12th and 17th June. This year’s theme is ‘X’, from X-Men to X chromosomes. Download the comprehensive festival guide for more details.From the Council for Secular Humanism: Hitchens from beyond the grave, in defense of Richard Dawkins.Brain Pickings is an excellent resource for extraordinary and interesting articles. Here’s a lovely collection of six vintage-inspired animations on critical thinking aimed at children aged 8-10. The films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government.Warning! Graphic depictions of morally reprehensible acts ahead. An amusing piece on why god hates checkered whiptail lizards.An 83-year-old Belgian woman is able to chew, speak and breathe normally again after a machine printed her a new jawbonewhich has proven to be as functional as her own used to be.Religion is being "side-lined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere", Conservative co-chairwoman Baroness Warsi wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph. Crispian Jago and the Daily Mashfire off a couple of satirical broadsides while Polly Toynbee and Martin Robbins respond from the pages of The Guardian.Time to cosy up: Sam Harris-The Fireplace Delusion & Hate mails with Richard Dawkins.From Sci-ence: Which embryo is human?Iranian women ninjas:: In a society that treats them like children, sports and especially martial arts offer a way to express strength and independence.Bringing this week’s Round-up to a close there’s just space to remind you that Deborah Hyde will be with us on March 14th where the theme will be Unnatural Predators, the malign supernatural and the folklore of fear. Don’t forget, we’ll also be clinking our skeptical glasses together for Galileo in the Old Contemptibles at our February Social.Here’s a trio of movies to send you on your way: The excellent Helen Arney with You and me and Walt Disney; like a surreal Busby Berkeley movie, some quite bizarre formation dancing;and from KMel Robotics, a swarm of Nano Quadrotors.This week’s Round-up was compiled by SitP regular Roy Beddowes.

Saturday, 11 February 2012

Hello
and welcome to this week's round-up. Plenty to get through with some big
stories around.

Firstly, many thanks to Alice Sheppard for her wonderful talk on
Wednesday. That night also saw the first sales of our DVD of Andy McIntosh's
talk and the first chance to get tickets to see Robin Ince do his first
Skeptics in the Pub, with us, in May. The DVD will be available at future SitPs
for £3 or you can order one online by emailing skepticaldvds@gmail.com. Prices are inclusive of
p&p - £4 to the UK, £5 to the EU and £5.50 worldwide (They are region
free). The DVDs are produced by volunteers on a not-for-profit basis and all
profits are donated to Birmingham Skeptics. More tickets for the Robin Ince
talk will be available at our next meeting which is Unnatural
Predators with Deborah Hydeon Wednesday 14th March. Don't forget our Social at
the Old Contemptibles on Wednesday 22nd February either.

The nominations for the Skeptic Awards were announced this week,
which I hope a lot of you voted for. Among the nominees you will find previous
speakers and many of the websites we point to on our round-ups. Each and every
one is worth a visit.

Following on from a link several weeks ago here are follow-ups to @jdc325's
post on why people write about homeopathy, highlighting the entertainment
value and
risks. This week people have
pointed us towards pages where Homeopaths have prepared “treatments” for AIDS and remedies based on words
written on a bit of paper. Worse still, World Homeopathy Awareness Week has been
announced targetting infertile couples. I'm sure they'll claim
success for anyone who happens to fall pregnant after being duped into buying
sugar pills. Pity about all of the others though.

What most rabid commentators seem to miss is that the Council case
predominantly relies on the Local Government Act 1972 and therefore doesn't
apply in other situations however David Allen Green points out that a similar
situation exists in that oaths
given in a courtroom are both required and have no effect at the same time.

In Science news, it seems there is little likelihood of a pardon for
Alan Turing and
the death of Roger Boisjoly has been announced. The name meant nothing to me,
but he's one of the engineers that argued to halt the
Challenger launch and had his career ruined for doing so.

Lastly we come to one of our previous speakers and the hero of the week. Matt
Parker, the stand-up mathematician who challenged a thief stealing a phone from
an unattended bag on a train. It's made national and transatlantic
news,
(although they call him English) not least because Matt took a considerable
length of video footage of the perp, who seemed happy for him to do so, so I'll
leave you with one question. Do you know this man?

Sunday, 5 February 2012

Welcome, the round-up is here once again. We’ve got lots of exciting things this week. As well as the usual interesting things from around the web we have a few announcements of our own. We have some good news about an upcoming speaker we’ve just announced. Our very first DVD as well. Details are all below. For now, let’s get on with the round-up.Let’s start of with the good news. Comedian and organiser of the godless Christmas shows Robin Ince is going to be our May speaker. His shows tend to sell out theatres so we expect it’ll be a tight fit in The Victoria. Those who attended Jon Ronson’s talk will remember how uncomfortable it can get so this time we’ll be selling tickets to control numbers. The tickets will only be £2.50 each, around the same level as the normal suggested donation. You can get tickets from each of the upcoming talks, we won’t be selling them online so if you want a ticket, make sure you come along. Many of us had chemistry sets when we were younger but some of us continued and went further, to the point of developing new medicines and splitting the atom in the kitchen. Jon Ronson looks at the world of home experimenters and home experimentation gone wrong.Nick Cohen talks Salman Rushdie and censorship.The terror of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa has faded but the challenge it posed to artistic freedom has not, as a brush with the Indian authorities has shown.So, what did you think of our visit from Andy McIntosh the other week then? We asked for your opinions and you gave them to us. Here’s a blog post with the rather interesting replies.Did you miss the talk? If so, fret not, we filmed the talk and will be selling it on DVD for £3. If you want a copy, you can collect it on Wednesday night, let us know if you want one by emailing us at birminghamskeptics at gmail.com and we’ll bring you one along. If you want one posting to you, pretty much anywhere in the world, it’s the same price but you’ll have to pay postage. We’ll have full details soon, in the meantime just email us.When you watch the DVD, one of the first things that’ll strike you, after your amazement at the quality of the mastering by Chris and the cover design by Paul, is the excellent music. This was done for us by DJ, remixer and producer Nathan Jay. Listeners of the Richard Herring and Andrew Collins podcast would know his work. Have a look at what else he’s done here.You know that health bill that’s going through that some assert benefits private healthcare providers? Imagine if the minister in charge of it had received financial backing from a private healthcare provider. No need to imagine, the telegraph has the details.Galileo’s Finger by Peter Atkins is based around 10 great ideas of science that have emerged since the time of Galileo and covers evolutionary theory, genetics chemistry, quantum theory, cosmology and mathematics. Former Birmingham Skeptics regular and now neuroscientist in Norway Tulpesh Patel reviews the book here.Staying on Tulpesh’s blog, here’s a summary of a talk he attended on the weaknesses and strengths of the climate change debate. Looks like he’s found a replacement for Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub in Norway. It’s OK, we always knew he’d find something else, we’re not upset. Excuse us for a moment, we have something in our eye.Alternative medicine practitioners in Australia are fighting claims by a 400-strong lobby group, called the Friends of Science in Medicine, that techniques such as acupuncture and homeopathy are pseudoscience. The article states that new research from the University of Adelaide has shown that when diagnosed with cancer, more than 50 percent of Australian men are turning to alternative medicine to help find a cure, or to improve their health. No wonder the alternative medicine practitioners are up in arms, that’s a lot of business to fight for.Want to brush up on your skeptical skills and knowledge? Well, you’re in luck, Token Skeptic has knocked up a skeptical reading list here in graphic form.Them Catholics have got themselves a nice card which says what a Catholic does. It only mentions the nice things though. I didn’t see a line stating that ‘as a Catholic I promise to condemn millions to suffering and injustice to uphold traditions that will secure the politcial stability of the Vatican elite’. Anyway, The Guardian asked folks of other faiths, including humanists, what would be on their card.One of our previous speakers stirred up a bit of controversy this week. Hayley Stevens found herself in the Daily Mail, Fox News and other grubby places after an ASA complaint she made was upheld. She’s been accused of being a group generally opposed to Christianity and an unofficial media adviser for some reason. Here’s her reasons for the complaint.Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, is backing Lesley Pilkington who’s a Christian pychotherapist that offers to ‘cure’ gay men of their homosexuality. Her therapy was described as "absurd" by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Who needs evidence when you’ve got bigotry?‘Psychic’ Sally is suing the Daily Mail for calling her a scammer. It’s one of those court cases that you’d like to see both sides lose. The story in question was written by Paul Zenon (who’ll be speaking at QED). Former Birmingham Skeptics speaker Ash Pryce had something to say on this.Good old Brian Cox, he was credited with inspiring a surge in the number of teenagers studying maths and science at ‘A’ Level. Now he’s been credited with sparking an interest in astronomy in Britain. As you know, Brian Cox was little heard of until his picture was featured in The Sunday Times in an article about us at Birmingham Skeptics. I think we should take a little of the credit.Those who do love their astronomy are in for a treat, Alice Sheppard is coming to speak to us on Wednesday night. Her talk is called ‘When the Universe came to the people. Citizen science for skeptics.’ You can find the details here. Make sure you come along.This week’s round-up was put together by Paul Bryant (@thebigyeti)

Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub meet on the second Wednesday of the month for a speaker. We will often meet at other times too for extra talks, socials and events. Follow our social media or go to our .org site to make sure you know what's happening.